Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me… –Walt Whitman

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Into the Mist

The drive from Denali to Anchorage has beautiful views of Mt. McKinley (or so we heard….) The rain and fog had settled in for three days straight and we were unfortunately driving this beautiful stretch of highway with really low visibility. There was a lot of grey mist, and sometimes when we were lucky we would see the top of a snowy peak or a glacier lake, but it was mostly rain and fog.

We stopped for lunch in Talkeetna, the charming town where climbers begin the assent of Denali. It reminded me of the show Northern Exposure (I might be dating myself). If the weather was nice, we heard this town is a great base for hikes, fishing, rafting, viewing Denali and just hanging out, but in the grey rain we decided to move on.

That night we stayed in Anchorage with friends who we spent three weeks rafting the Colorado river with a few years back, it was fun to catch up and reminisce about that epic trip. We did three huge loads of laundry and were fed delicious food. Having stops like that really makes road life easier.

This is a picture of Scott and Dave (who we stayed with) on Horn rapid in the Grand Canyon. Julian who was rowing his first time down the Grand seemed to always hit the holes sideways!

The next day we drove the Seward Highway, one of the most beautiful stretches of road I have ever driven. I had just read the book Looking for Alaska by Peter Jenkins, who moved his family to Seward, so I was excited to stay in this town I had just read so much about. Seward is a fishing town surrounded by dramatically steep rain forested mountains that circle the stunning Resurrection Bay. Seward is also the base to Kenai Fjords National Park where you can easily hike to Exit Glacier or take a boat cruise through the dramatic fjords which Sam and I decided to splurge on if the sun ever came out.

It was raining hard when we visited Exit Glacier so the pictures sucked, but it was fun to hike in the rain

This was our wet but beautiful camp spot looking directly into Resurrection Bay. Seward has $15 camping all along water front. We stayed here for two days and waited out the rain.

After two days of wet hikes to glaciers and exploring the mist shrouded town (we loved the Seward Brewery and Yukon Bar) we saw on the weather report that there was a chance for sun so we took a risk and booked a boat trip the following day. We were really lucky during our time in Seward because the Carnival cruise ship (which seems to be the life blood of tourism in Alaska) that was supposed to be docked in Seward broke down, so we had the town and the boat cruise practically to ourselves.